Goodreads: Are Book Recommendations Doomed to Failure?

I've been a member of Goodreads for a few months now. It's a popular social networking website with 2.8 million users, and it's based primarily on books. It allows people to list books they've read, to review books, and to recommend books to their friends using a variety of features.

But I'm not entirely sure why I use Goodreads. I don't use it as it's meant to be used: I never take book recommendations from my friends, and I rarely use the lists or reviews to discover great new books that I want to read. I don't even pay attention to the News Feed, which shows what my friends are reading on a daily basis.

To be honest, I'm constantly confounded by others' reading selections. My grad school friends are busy listing every tome of critical theory they tackle. My high school and college friends are reading mostly popular contemporary fiction, which I rarely attempt. And my writer friends are reading very impressive novels and short story collections by very famous writers; their selections make me feel impressed, ashamed, and a little bit sleepy.

On the whole, Goodreads reminds me how impossible it is to match your reading interests up to those of others. Even with good friends, it's an incredible challenge: have you ever met anyone who shared your reading tastes exactly? I mean, someone who could recommend books to you that, 85% of the time, you just love, and vice versa? Even for close friends, family, and former classmates, the best I can claim is about 35% shared tastes, and that's with my mom and boyfriend!

For some reason, reading tastes, unlike musical tastes or movie tastes, are nearly impossible to match up. Perhaps this is because reading a book is a real commitment. Reading one takes something like 8-10 hours (depending on the book and the reader). That's the kind of commitment that can deter someone from trying a novel outside of his/her known interests, preferred genres, and comfort zones. I mean, I respect, admire, and commiserate with the intellects and tastes of my Goodreads friends, but I wouldn't take one of their recommendations blindly without already feeling some strong interest in the book's subject matter, author, style, etc.

Even though I doubt the plausibility of building friendships through reading lists, I'll probably keep using my Goodreads account. I'll probably never use it for its recommendations or reviews, but I'll use it to keep myself honest: once I've posted a book on my profile, I feel compelled to finish it or face the shame of everyone knowing that I stopped in the middle.

Speaking of which, William Carlos Williams, I'm coming for you! I am determined to see your Sour Grapes through to the end!

Learning HTML

When I was in junior high, my gifted class teacher was always trying to make her students into amateur computer programmers. In 1996, she thought that computers were The Future (and she was right, of course), so she thought that all of us smart little kiddies should go out into the world and become rich computer programmers. She made us all spend one period a week writing DOS programs on an ancient green screen Apple computer.

It looked something like this.

I staunchly repressed any memory of this time of my life, except for how much I hated it.

But I've been learning HTML for a few weeks now, and, surprisingly, I sort of love it. HTML stands for "HyperText Markup Language," and it's the language that most Web pages are written in. If you've never messed with it, it sounds really impressive and complicated and fancy, but it's really not. It's fun and pretty intuitive, once you know the basics of the language.

I like learning HTML for a few reasons. First, the book I'm using is great. Charlie recommended it: it's called Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML. It teaches you all the basics of HTML, CSS, and XHTML, and it does so with lots of exercises, frequent repetition, plenty of diagrams, and a writing style that's humorous and casual.

The awesome Head First HTML book I'm using.

The Head First books are supposed to be "Brain-Friendly" and to make learning a new programming language intelligible, fun, and easy. Fortunately, their system is definitely working for me--I'm actually remembering everything I learn from week to week (which is more than I can say for all those history classes I took in high school).

Second, learning HTML makes me appreciate the complexity of the Internet. I've used the Web for so long that I take most of it for granted. But the more I learn about HTML and the quirks of Web browsers, the more I respect the people who make really good Web sites. To write a good Web site, I think that a programmer has to be both compulsively detail-oriented and capable of planning ahead and seeing the big picture. It's hard to do, and they definitely get paid well for a reason!

Third, learning HTML is a completely different form of mental exercise. I'm used to crafting words into texts that are flexible and depend on themselves for their internal logic. For example, there are no rules about what makes a good poem; the only rule is that each word and line in the poem must contribute to the whole, that each part must follow the rules and structure that the poem creates for itself. So poetry (and most forms of writing) is about relative harmony, not correctness.

My HTML for one of the Head First exercises.

Writing HTML, on the other hand, is about perfect correctness according to what the Web browser expects. Every element and tag has to be correct and without typos (leaving out a single < or " or = or / can make a whole element fail!). It's strict, and I love that. I enjoy it in the same way that I enjoy doing math: it doesn't come easily to me, but it does make me think in a new way, which gives my mind a healthy workout.

Fourth, I love the excitement of loading a new page into my browser. I never know if it's going to look right or not. I type a change into my editor, click the save icon, open the page in my Web browser, and then wait with baited breath: Will it load? Will the images appear? Will the link be active?

One of my Head First projects. Each image is a thumbnail that links to another page.

Having a page open perfectly is kind of a rush. It's like magic: you write this file that looks like a jumble of half-words and symbols, but when the page loads, it transforms into a real live Web site. I love it, and Charlie (who works full-time as a Web developer) says he feels the same way when he tests a site for the first time.

Right now, I've only made exercises out of the Head First book, and I haven't dabbled in style at all. But who knows? Maybe one day I'll get to experience to rush of making an entire Web site that's functional and pretty!

Tips for Tentative Tweeters

Tips for Tentative Tweeters

August 27, 2009

I like Twitter.

There, I said it. I like to use it, and I like to read it, no matter how many pundits and laymen alike grumble over the microblog's purported uselessness. While not everyone who creates a Twitter account will find the site useful or compelling, the widespread appeal of Twitter is no fluke. In the right hands and with the right intentions, Twitter can actually be fun, useful, and even informative. Here's the why, who, what, when, and where of using Twitter to its best advantage.

Why should you be on Twitter?

I like Twitter because it's a quick, easy, precise way to post interesting stuff on the web. I get most of my cultural news this way: I've found new books to read, new blogs to follow, and new topics to think and write about through my friends' tweets. The best Twitter accounts should make you feel engaged, informed, and current.

Your tweets should do the same for your followers. Forwarding links, composing brief reviews, and sharing quick facts provides a varied and compelling array of information to your readers. It also allows you to promote great ideas, articles, and writers to ensure that they get the exposure they deserve. Think of tweets and re-tweets as brief, culturally enriching chain letters that can spread the best web content across the globe. But, you know, without the chain mail curses.

Twitter has not proven particularly useful for creating social intimacy or providing a space for intelligent debate. The site is not a "social network" in the conventional sense because it doesn't attempt to represent the self like Facebook and MySpace do; at best, Twitter conveys the momentary interests and fleeting preoccupations of an individual. So if you're looking for a web application to forge connections with your peers, Twitter might not be for you.

What do people tweet about, and what should people tweet about?

According to a recent study, about 40% of tweets are "useless babble" about the weather or eating a sandwich or buying a spice rack. These are bad tweets. Another 37% of tweets are conversational (meaning that they are directed at only one person, not at the general population of followers). Only 9% of tweets are re-tweets (meaning they're interesting enough to have "pass along value") and only 4% of tweets are news-related.

I'll be honest: about one in ten of my tweets is "useless babble" (actual tweet: "the plaster & paint are up @ the grandparent's house--what a day!"). No one cares. I know this, and I try to limit myself accordingly. But when I do fall under the Internet's siren song of unfettered self-expression, I try to make up for my inanity through cultural commentary attached to #hashtags (such as movie reviews or book recommendations) and links to articles that I think are worth reading.

I try to tweet away from personal topics as much as possible. Like any other form of writing, you should consider the needs and interests of you audience; your Twitter friends are following you because they want to be entertained or informed, not to be subjected to the minutia of your daily life. If in doubt about whether something personal is tweet-worthy, ask yourself this: if you were to run into one of your followers on the street, would you find it necessary to tell him or her that you "Might stop for a coffee before hitting the office!" or "Luv luv luv cantaloupe for breakfast!!!"? No? Then don't tweet it.

Who should you follow?

I follow friends, colleagues, and a few news accounts. I follow friends because we share a sense of humor and they add personal zest to my home page. I follow colleagues because they frequently post great links about interests we share; they help further my professional interests. I follow news sites to stay up to date on certain topics and publications, though I only follow news profiles if they don't tweet more than a few times a day and their interests are very similar to my own (like @newyorkerdotcom and @iwantmedia, which tracks digital media trends).

I follow less than thirty people, and I don't think that a tweeter could follow more than fifty without losing track of what's going on in real time (and that's the whole point of Twitter, right?). When it comes to who you follow, keep the list small to keep it useful.

Where does tweeting occur?

Basically, you can tweet on-line or over a mobile device like a cell phone. It doesn't matter where you tweet, but you should know that tweeting from your cell phone makes it easier and more tempting to post useless and off-putting blather to Twitter. Tweeting about a visit to the doctor's office ("Sitting in the waiting room for twenty minutes now. SOOO bored. Old Redbooks suck!") may alleviate your boredom, but it's only increasing that of your followers.

When should one tweet?

I tweet about twice a day on average: sometimes I tweet ten times a day, and sometimes I go for several days without tweeting. I have friends who tweet once a week and friends who tweet as often as they check their email (which is very often).

There is no ideal tweet frequency, but tweeting more than once an hour on average (more than 24 posts a day) is bad Twitter etiquette. It's annoying when a single tweeter fills your home page with updates. Besides, it seems implausible that a single person could have more than 20 hilarious epiphanies, bizarre experiences, enlightening opinions, and illuminating reading sessions in only a few waking hours. Anyone who's tweeting at this frequency is not tweeting much worth reading.

However, if your life just happens to be that fascinating, your mind that fecund, and your web trolling that extraordinary, you can find me at @amoebaspleez; I'll be sure to follow back.

Finding "A Certain Type of Silence"

David L. Ulin, book editor for the Los Angeles Times, recently wrote about how he's having a hard time sitting down to read. In "The Lost Art of Reading," he describes the problem as not "a failure of desire so much as one of will. Or not will, exactly, but focus: the ability to still my mind long enough to inhabit someone else's world, and to let that someone else inhabit mine. Reading is an act of contemplation, [. . .] In order for this to work, however, we need a certain type of silence, an ability to filter out the noise."

He blames his lack of focus on the usual culprit: "our over-networked culture, in which every rumor and mundanity is blogged and tweeted." He writes that people today don't seek "contemplation [. . .] but an odd sort of distraction masquerading as being in the know. [. . .] it is more important to react than to think, that we live in a culture in which something is attached to every bit of time."

Though my gut reaction toward Ulin is one of sympathy (not only do I appreciate him as a fellow reader, but he's also written a beautifully worded article), I'm suspicious of his argument; it feels cheap and rote to blame a distracted mind on the Internet and social media. Having grown up with the Internet (I played computer games in elementary school computer labs and had AOL and Instant Messenger at home in high school), it's hard for me to say what the world would be like without these distractions, and it's hard to know whether I would be a better, more patient reader without them.

I have, however, felt what Ulin feels when I try to read, that "encroachment of the buzz, the sense that there is something out there that merits my attention." For Ulin, this sense comes from the immediateness and omnipresence of online culture, in which "time collapses into an ever-present now."

But for me, I think it's something else. Reading is certainly getting more difficult over time, and I, too, frequently feel like I should be doing something else when I sit down to read. But my distraction stems not from the Internet but from being in my mid-twenties, my increasing responsibilities, and my new worries over getting a job and being able to run my own life. Without school or a job to ground me, it's difficult to feel like I'm accomplishing anything with my time, even if I spend my days furiously researching career paths and refining my resume. My lack of paid employment makes it harder for me to enjoy reading because there's no solid productivity to make my free time more enjoyable, more emphatically my own; it's like not being able to enjoy your ice cream because you didn't get enough vegetable stew at dinner.

For me, the flash and distraction of Twitter and Facebook are certainly there, but the real distraction comes from inside, from the part of me that wants to accomplish something with my days, not just let a world of experiences wash over me.

Besides, Ulin forgets that codex books are just another form of technology, another mode of communication that was once regarded with suspicion. Our ancient ancestors shared their history through chanted poems. The Greeks used wax tablets. Writers of the Renaissance relied on hand-written sheaves of paper that they passed from friend to friend. The Victorians loved voluminous serialized books that went on for thousands of pages.

Twenty years ago, a 250-page paperback novel was the norm. Today's Internet is just another technological revolution, not the end of reading or literature. Perhaps the next hundred years will bring even newer technology against which the Internet will seem staid, traditional, solid, and comfortingly slow-paced.

I still agree with Ulin that reading has the power to help us to both "escape and to be engaged," that it is an essential "act of meditation, with all of meditation's attendant difficulty and grace." Reading a book is something that I would never give up. But I am weary of hearing people bellyache about Twitter and TMZ.com and the rapid proliferation of online media. We must learn how to take the best of what the Internet can offer while discovering a new equilibrium between online culture and our mental peace. This balance, I know, can be found; humans have been adapting to our new tools for millennia.